


the people with empty faces once worshipped the water

by pudinaa



Category: Original Work
Genre: 12k behind on my nano but im really trying !!, F/F, Gay, Memory Loss, Nature Magic, Nonbinary, Other, but am very excited, did i mention this is very gay, girls being gay, hopefully someone will read this ?, nature loving, the love interest is an escaped convict and the main character is the king's daughter, this is my first long term project !!, very gay, will just be posting snippets since i dont have whole chapters written out yet, wlw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:00:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27506503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pudinaa/pseuds/pudinaa
Summary: The lost souls wake up in front of the big mirror in the king's palace. It tells them to run sometimes, sometimes to stay. It tells them that everything'll be okay.Lehar, wanting to restore her home and the faces the water stole from her. Nabah, seeing familiarity everywhere she goes but seeking consolation in new places. Them, working out a place they don't know, together.And somewhere, it begins to fall apart.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	the people with empty faces once worshipped the water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tin_girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tin_girl/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for tin_girl bc i havent written in months and your work really made me want to. 
> 
> this is just a messy, first draft thing, scraps that i like from here and there, and i hope that you like it too, just a little bit

There’s a ball of fire in my hand and a mirror in front of me. I look translucent, and the room behind me is empty, dark. There’s a soft echo in the chamber I stand in, and I can’t understand the language in which it speaks but the mirror, it has hands and legs and arms and a face; it shoots me a look of exasperation and unfurls a word upon its surface: run. 

Everything around me is foreign. I remember travelling here the previous night – this place was silent then, its nimble fingers tapping a low rhythm upon its belly, warming without much effect. I hadn’t noticed anyone around, and the trees that were shifting, moving out of place and then back in had just been a trick of the night. The ensnaring blackness was just out of reach; my fingers reaching up and up but coming back empty, brown, as if the place was telling me, “Look, give it a rest.” 

When I start to run, my feet do not touch the ground at all. I am not quite floating yet, but I feel weightless, and even more when I see a dozen shadowy figures race alongside me. These figures—they all but appeared from thin air, but they are laughing, jesting. They extend their shadowy palms towards me, introducing themselves with garbled sounds. They are physical, but not human, not animal. Not running on their legs alongside me, nor floating. It seems to be that they simply are, purposefully coming across in a way that makes it impossible to stow them under a label. They push at each other, shove each other till they fall upon dirt, and suddenly I too am pulled backwards. 

“Wait,” all of them say, together. It doesn’t seem synchronized, even though the rest of their movements were—it appears to me that all of them are different parts of a whole, and are thus connected in a firm, unbreakable sort of way. Right now, they all lay upon the ground, hands behind their heads and their legs folded. They don’t stop me when I start running away, breaking from the invisible cord that holds me across my waist - they throw their voice - a hello comes crashing into me from forward, then from behind, then jostling me from the sides. I am out of breath, most of it stolen from the laughing figures, whatever’s left trickling out of my mouth in threads of fear, so I stop, hands on my knees, panting.

“Hey,” I say. 

“Hey,” they all echo. Twelve of them echo, I count. 

My breath is coming in single word bursts and I have to take some time after everything I say, but the figures are patient. Their form flickers off and on, and I wonder if extending my wrists in front of them and asking them to take me wherever they wanted to, wherever they needed to, will make them go away. 

“Who- are- you.”

It’s almost a statement instead of a question, and I’m not surprised with the answer I get. “Us?” they say. “We are, and we aren’t. Look around - what do you see?” Their voice is scratchy and light, and it’s getting under my skin, tickling my throat so much that I want to scrub it off.

It occurs to me that these are the kind of jesters you read about in storybooks. The world around is shaking, slightly off-kilter, and these figures are smirking, arms beckoning like, give us an answer already!

There was a very specific weight to this place when I had first arrived, but now it feels strangely empty, as though if my arms were long enough, they would extend forever and still not find a surface to touch until they meet each other on the opposite side of the world. As I think this, my arms feel weightless. They float up in front of me in my mind’s eye, but when I force myself back, they sit beside my hips like they always did, like they had never left. 

“Nothing,” I say, surprised. “Nothing at all.” 

They smile. I hadn’t noticed earlier, but the figures are made of abnormalities. They are all of a shifting, moving material, sometimes swirling to form images and patterns, sometimes stilling. Their expressionless, empty faces do not have mouths, they do not have ears. When they speak, the sound surrounds me, caging me where I stand, telling me to listen as hard as I can, but the voices around me fading away the more I reach out towards them.

And they are speaking now - it is again a distorted speech, an overlapping, jumbled thing coming from all directions at the same time. They crash into me, a supernova effect, but reverse, and I am suspended, limp from where I hand in the air. Still, the voice-cage around me is growing tighter, I am almost pressed against its walls, until I fully am. These sounds, they are encompassing, and the harder I try to dissect them, the more they rattle, as though they want to go against the very thing their existence implies. This cage I am in, it is airtight and leak proof, so I am pressed against the glass, hands on my throat, on my mouth - 

“Stop!” a voice booms. I expect to fall down upon the ground from where I was floating in the air, but I never do. The figures look at me as though saying, did you really fall for that?

“Stop,” says the voice again. There is no apparent speaker, and at first, I can’t make out the word itself, just feel the vibration. It feels deliberate and soft, and the slightest bit fearful. A sound of heavy footfalls, and then a panting person waves their hand, the thing around me vanishing. 

I fall to the ground. The dozen figures (I am starting to call them ghosts in my head now, there is no other word I can think of) surround me. Again - the garbled voices and a wall crashing closer, and then - a booming sound. The person in front of me waves their hand with ease and nonchalance, and the ghosts fall back, drifted by an empty wind. 

“Are you alright,” says the person. They look concerned, eyebrows pinching slightly, fingers on my wrist feeling for a pulse. “You’ve gone blue.”

“Oh!” I don’t feel cold - in fact, I don’t feel anything at all, even numb. I say so to the person.

“Okay then,” they laugh, getting up and extending a hand towards me. 

“Thank you,” I say, brushing off my pants. The place feels different now, lighter in weight but denser. I cannot see the blackness anymore. I feel almost compelled to reach out and gauge for myself how physical this person is, despite having the feel of their fingers on my wrist, still, but I don’t.

The stranger smiles brightly, offering me their hand once again. “Lehar. My name. It was great meeting you, but I’m afraid we really need to get going now.”


End file.
